Let's be more real
I’d like us to celebrate the harder times of a startup more, to normalize the ups and downs, and to acknowledge that much of the time we’re just grinding away, with things neither terrible OR great.
Hello again! Hope you all had a great (long) weekend, and that you got some down time in during the last couple weeks of summer. For many, I’m sure you’ve been working away, looking to get ahead of what will likely be a busy fall.
In today’s newsletter, I want to point out a theme that I keep seeing over and over and over again especially on social channels: the never-ending barrage of how great everything is. Now, people that know me know I’m almost universally an optimist by nature. I try hard to not dwell on negative thoughts or get sucked into negative talk. I try to surround myself with people who are genuine people, and who are not afraid to talk about the highs and the lows of what they are experiencing. And I love seeing my peers doing great things and being successful.
On social media, I do enjoy the occasional “hey this thing I did is really working” or “wow my team is really good.” I’ve been there, sometimes you have to externalize when things are going well, and share that feeling with others.
However, I feel like recently I’ve seen so much content on how everything is so great, working so well, that I feel like we’re at peak levels of positivity. I’m seeing the same people brag about the same stuff over and over again, and it’s getting really old. I’m seeing smart people out there who instead of sharing the strategy or tactics behind how they are crushing it, just keep talking about how greatly the are crushing it. And I am seeing some people say “wow I’m so surprised at how much success I’m having right now…can you believe it?” and it’s so contrived! If you are having wild success right now it’s probably not that much of a surprise, you’ve probably seen it coming for a while, usually from a lot of hard and smart work. I get it - you should feel proud of what you are building. But let’s all have some humility!
The reality I’ve both experienced and seen through my mentorship with founders and my 20+ years of startups is that things are bordering on not good to bad a lot of the time.
Now, that’s not to say things aren’t also great sometimes. But most of the time you spend in a startup is somewhere between “the world is ending” and “this is the best day ever.” It’s a rollercoaster of challenges, which is why you need a lot of grit to last long term.
But you know what else you need? Luck. And if you’re not catching luck, or if you’re really struggling, does seeing this never-ending feed of “everything is so great!” actually helpful? I don’t think so.
I’d like us to celebrate the harder times of a startup more, to normalize the ups and downs, and to acknowledge that much of the time we’re just grinding away, with things neither terrible OR great.
I know when I’ve had my share of tough times, what reassures me that I’m going to be OK (in business) is seeing how other people also had tough times, and that sometimes they made it out and were successful, and sometimes they, well, had to close up shop.
So, as an exercise to practice being more real myself, I put a post together that I shared on LinkedIn recently titled: “It's OK to not pretend that everything is great with your business.”
I’m sharing the full post below, and would love your thoughts:
This shit is hard (building a company). And for founders struggling - even the most positive among us - sometimes need a reminder that what you're going through is probably being experienced by many of your peers, you just may not know.
With that, here are 5 things that didn't work out for me last year (in business):
5.
Lost a client that was over 20% of revenue after spending over a year driving incredible results for them. The market just crushed this client, and their investors - like so many VCs are doing right now - made them cut marketing & sales to focus on "unit economics." With that, my team was gone. While it was bad for us, it was much much worse for them. This was stressful.
4.
Had 2 major falling outs with people I was working with. One ended up litigious. The other just turned a relationship from good to bad. Not fun at all. I lost sleep over this.
3.
I had to let go huge portions of my team(s) over multiple rounds of layoffs over the course of 8-12 months. With market pressures forcing startups to invest less in marketing, per item 5 above we were not immune even though we had a great offering and were doing great work. As clients pulled back on marketing, our revenue was pushed down as well. I struggled to balance making cuts vs keeping all of the service offerings and delivery of work A+ with a smaller team. Multiple people whom I'm grateful for took paycuts, but ultimately we helped many find new jobs to cut our costs. I lost a lot of sleep over this over many months.
2.
My main business failed. I failed to fully monetize the product I set out to build, had a too high burn ratio, moved to services, but ended up dissolving the entity after pivoting. This led to almost-burnout, a period of time where I wasn't sure what to do or how to do it, or what direction to take. It also set the course for a multi month entity shutdown, and another transition between one entity and another, and a whole bunch of quite literally the most boring work landing on my plate, because nobody else could help.
1.
I was sick for over 6 weeks in the late Fall / early Winter because of items 2-5 above and about 50 other challenges we faced.
Challenges aside, it was an incredible year of ups and downs, and I wouldn't change a thing.
What's my point? The downs make the ups a lot better.
And more people than you think are having a hard time. I have spent time looking back at my own bragging from a year ago and realize I’ve been part of the problem, only sharing things when they are going well or when things are somewhat comfortable. But I’m going to try to focus more on the challenges, and how I’ve overcome some of them to become a better entrepreneur myself.
If you are stuck and need help just reply to this email, or find me on the following platforms:
If you need deeper help, review my website to learn more about how I work with startups and scale ups.
Cheers,
Craig